Read full description of the books:

This book was on its way to being a 4 or even 5 star book for me when I first began and while I still enjoyed The Family overall, by the end, I could not shake a distinct sense of dissatisfaction.

In the beginning, the book fulfilled all it promised the reader it would be. It was lush with grandeur and decadence. The characters were intricate and detailed, with the specific sort of nuances only Mario Puzo could provide, the nuances that made a reader invest in a character, love them, in spite of all their garish sins, something quite necessary when relating a tale about the infamous Borgia family. However, as strong as it started, it just as quickly devolved.

Puzo passed away before he could complete his work and The Family was completed by Carol Gino. While I'm loathe to blame the dual authorship for the books inconsistenticies, for Gino deserves a thank you for completing the work so that we could experience Puzo's final vision, I honestly feel that the dual voices were in the end the problem. While I don't know for certain where Puzo left off before his passing, around the midway point, the story began to dissolve into one exaggerated scheme after another. Pivotal characters suddenly disappeared for long periods of time, while secondary characters suddenly became the masterminds behind the entire plot.

It's as if, in the face of uncertainty regarding the final destination of the story, it was decided that it was best to do more rather than less, exploit every possibly sin and crime laid against this family historically, even if it didn't make complete sense with where the story started. All nuance and character depth was sacrificed in the name of shock value and by the end of the book, there wasn't time left in the characters life historically, to do their story justice.

A disappointing end to a beginning with so much spectacular potential.

Read information about the author

Puzo was born in a poor family of Neapolitan immigrants living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. Due to his poor eyesight, the military did not let him undertake combat duties but made him a public relations officer stationed in Germany. In 1950, his first short story, The Last Christmas, was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.

At periods in the 1950s and early 1960s, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for publisher Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. Puzo, along with other writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, worked for the company line of men's magazines, pulp titles like Male, True Action, and Swank. Under the pseudonym Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for True Action.

Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather, was first published in 1969 after he had heard anecdotes about Mafia organizations during his time in pulp journalism. He later said in an interview with Larry King that his principal motivation was to make money. He had already, after all, written two books that had received great reviews, yet had not amounted to much. As a government clerk with five children, he was looking to write something that would appeal to the masses. With a number one bestseller for months on the New York Times Best Seller List, Mario Puzo had found his target audience. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie received 11 Academy Award nominations, winning three, including an Oscar for Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola and Puzo collaborated then to work on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III.

Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, which he was unable to continue working on due to his commitment to The Godfather Part II. Puzo also co-wrote Richard Donner's Superman and the original draft for Superman II. He also collaborated on the stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club.

Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà, but the manuscript was finished before his death, as was the manuscript for The Family. However, in a review originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules Siegel, who had worked closely with Puzo at Magazine Management Company, speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless hack." Siegel also acknowledges the temptation to "rationalize avoiding what is probably the correct analysis -- that [Puzo] wrote it and it is terrible."

Puzo died of heart failure on July 2, 1999 at his home in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. His family now lives in East Islip, New York.